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Nice Work Creating New Terrorists, You Morons
Preface: This is admittedly somewhat peripheral to economics and
business. However, terrorist attacks cost many billions of dollars in
damage, and could severely depress consumer sentiment and “animal
spirits”. And, as I have previously written, unnecessary wars hurt
the economy. See this and this.
American civilian and military leaders have been creating new terrorists through their:
(1) Use of torture
and
(2) Killing of innocent civilians- especially children – in Arabic countries.
Torture
A high-level American Special Ops interrogator says that information obtained from torture is unreliable, and that torture just creates more terrorists. Indeed, he says that torture of innocent Iraqis by Americans is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place.
A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists.
A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
“This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly
believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they
know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of
terror than it could possibly neutralize.”
Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool.
A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said,
Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our
troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a
propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have
pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.
The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found:
“The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies … strengthened the hand of our enemies.”
Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism.
Killing of Innocent Civilians
The former number 2 counter-terrorism expert at the State Department says that military attacks in Iraq increase terrorism.
Indeed, Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country.
After the U.S. military allegedly handcuffed and then killed a bunch of Afghan kids, thousands of Afghans are protesting the brutal killings, chanting 'Death to America!'.
Nice work creating new terrorists, you morons.
Anyone who thinks this is a partisan issue should read this and this.
In related news, not only are the U.S. government's actions
creating more terrorists, but "reforms" made to the intelligence
agencies have made it MORE DIFFICULT to stop the terrorists they've created.
Idiots.
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The problem is that karma is a bitch - what goes around comes around.
Hey GW, are you really my friend John Kerry? Or is that PM? At any rate, keep up the good work.
I honestly believe, leave Al-Qaeda alone and they would collapse under their own wieght. They used to be very fringe and not welcome in their home countries.
former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee , who is on Fox right now , said he has been to israel 13 times this year and is about to go back again. I say who is paying for this and why the need for him to continually go to israel? this tard is being pushed hard for something, not sure what, going around pretending he is a Christian to get the idiotic Christian right to listen to him when he is nothing less than a liar. The man was a terrible governor
http://quiblit.com/NewsandPolitics/PresidentialElection2008/Republicans/...
huckabee is being pushed because of his religious and political viewpoints which line up with the zionist government in israel.....
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/08a/huckabee_christian_zionist.html
so keep this in mind if any of you think this tard is worth anything resembling your vote when the time comes and it will, trust me, it will.....
Good article...glad to see more of the finance people waking up. The massive theft that happened last year, finally forced some of the finance-econ centric people to wake up and looka t some of the other lies, fraud and deception.
Remember when people thought the stasi-state type surveilance was impossible here?Now both major parties cheerfully accept it.
matter of fact, when they created homeland insecurity, they used a guy from the former east german secret police, as a consultant. now bull dyke napolitano is seeing terrorist in her sleep. we are all suspects.
Like this waste of everyone's time:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/01/08/oregon.unruly.passenger/index.html
Poor guy. I might be next. Just for writing, "I might be next."
you follow this site and are aware of the abyss of fiscal malfeasence reported here daily; yet you scoff at the idea that the war on terror, a great income source for the banksters, is anything but a justified, not to mention endless, war. i just dont get it. well yeah i smoke crack, but i would never pop pills. c'mon give me some credit
Allegations are not facts, and only scummy little worms treat them as though they are.
Just take a look at this thread, the links, and the comments to see who the annelids are.
As far as the arguments that Islam represents some unique evil in the world, this is simply psychological projection.
In the postwar years, no other country comes anywhere remotely close to the (overwhelmingly Christian) US in terms of outwardly directed aggression against other countries.
If we look at the foreign policy track record of the US since its inception as a country, it is obvious that it is the US that is uniquely violent and war-loving among nations.
You have the conquest of North America, the Hawaiian Islands, and parts of Mexico.
You have direct military involvement prior to WW I in Tripoli, Mexico, Algiers, Cuba, Argentina, Peru, Sumatra, Fiji, China, Uruguay, Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Angola, Japan, Colombia, Egypt, Korea, Haiti, Chile, Honduras, the Philippines, Dominican Republic, and Turkey.
Germany during WW I.
Direct military involvement between WW I and WW II in Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Soviet Russia, Turkey, Honduras, China, Guatemala, Russia, Nicaragua, and the Netherlands.
Germany, Japan, Africa and the Middle East during WW II.
After WW II, direct military and covert operations in China, Italy, Greece, The Philippines, Korea, Albania, Germany, Iran, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Syria, Indonesia, British Guiana, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Algeria, Ecuador, The Congo, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Uruguay, Chile, Iraq, Australia, Angola, Zaire, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Afghanistan and El Salvador.
When your country has always been at war in one form or another, perhaps it's time for some self reflection. I've seen this movie before and I can assure you that it ends in tears.
Wrong, it's not psychological projection, they really do have it in for Western civilization and have said so explicitly on numerous occasions. You should try listening. Theirs is a uniquely warlike ideology.
As for your laundry list of "US track record", are you suggesting, for example, that the US should have sat back and done nothing in the case of, say, Germany and Japan during WW2 that you listed? There is a lot of evil in this world; if you don't stand up to it, you get killed or subjugated.
Fortunately for Americans, you are not in charge of our foreign policy.
You try living in the oil filled desert for all those years with me and my friends shooting at you the whole time and we'll see how gentle you are.
"Anytime you fight a war, you engender hatred in your enemy."
Not in the United States!!! It seems as if every time we try to protect our interests from a bunch of idiots and psychos (especially the Islamic Jihaders) our own country men hate all we are, instead of turning that hatred to where it belongs, away. We do not act on hatred, we act on principal as in "don't start nothin' and there won't be nothin'".
All these idiots need to do is to stop trying to kill us and we will cease any hostilities.
""""""""""""
"The war doesn't end by handing out Hershey bars. It ends when you crush the enemy's ability to resist."
Too true.
It is amazing that idiots are saying that the United States "tortures" people, and then the only citation is "waterboarding" which in my view is not "torture". Only those that don;t want it happening to them are against it.
Hell even the Lamestream Media have been waterboarded,... by choice!!!
That shows it is not even in the same "moral equivalence" of beheading, or using electrical shocks, power tools or just plain brute force on a human being, that damages permanently.
Dunking someones head in water is not torture, and neither is keeping them cold, or playing crappy music, and it is a far cry from having a rubber hose and pressurized water or power drill shoved up your rear end.
Hell we are giving them a lawyer and a court proceeding, and it will cost us a freakin' fortune.
This for a bunch of losers, that are hell bent on killing us, or are caught on the battle field where we would be trying to kill them anyway. You idiots have now just sealed the enemy's fate:
They will be killed on the battle field.
This is what the "propaganda" of Georgie's story is about. IT is called blow back, and the Jihadists know that you limp wrist-ed, amputated back boned, no good anti Americans fall for it hook line and sinker all the time.
Can't wait til some of you come face ot face with "Special Forces" and have to defend your crap to them. It will be a bad day for your traitorous ass!
"Can't wait til some of you come face ot face with 'Special Forces' and have to defend your crap to them. It will be a bad day for your traitorous ass!" [...he said, whilst furiously stroking his micro-member and clutching his George Bush action-figure doll.]"
That any different to you "tossing off" to Obama posters???
How about stroking yourself whilst clutching a Bin Laden and KSM Three way blow up dolls???
"Hell even the Lamestream Media have been waterboarded,... by choice!!!"
Yeah, like that guy on the "The Man Show", who was able to withstand only a few seconds of it.
The real hard-core stuff (e.g., raping people with broken bottles, torturing children in front of their parents, boiling people alive) is outsourced by the CIA to torture prisons in places like Uzbekistan.
"Yeah, like that guy on the "The Man Show", who was able to withstand only a few seconds of it."
I guess it works pretty well on pussies then.
ROTFLMAO.
I hope ZH doesn't venture further into these types of articles. I was suggesting this site to many of my friends for off the beaten path stories. I'm afraid these type of stories attracts the wingnut politicos and extreme conspiracy theorists. Neither of which are good for a website, and the later help to undermine the credibility you all are trying to gain.
With that being said and since this article is already up, if torture doesn't work then how did we extract usable intel from khalid sheik Mohammed (sp)? Who cares if we waterboard him, and who cares if people get upset by it? The guy masterminded 9/11 and had a hand in other plots. We got usable info and that dirtbag got some just desserts.
I hope that you venture further into ZH amonymous, maybe then you'll see how this is relevant to a fight club themed comentary on economics and related issues. Try getting a handle and reading some more and you might come to find out that the relation between this war, torture, and the economy is a very close one. For the short version of those relationships start at WWI&WWII's relationship with the current economic system, some fed reserve learning might also be necessary.
"America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)"
The two envoys were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams sent to negotiate with the Barbary Pirates. Christopher Hitchens http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_urbanities-thomas_jefferson.html
With or without American imperialism, with or without American torture, these asshats would still be slitting throats right and left. Whether we play nice, or nuke them, will matter not one iota.
It's not that I agree or disagree with GW's thesis, (I don't) but that it's a moot point. These violent factions of Islam are pressing ahead with the above mentioned plans regardless of what we do. (And by "we", I mean all people that don't "acknowledge their authority".)
Total nonsense. You want an empire with troops and bases littering the globe in over 100 countries? Terrorism is the price you pay for that empire, along with the closing down of open society at home.
However, the average individual in the US has a roughly 1 in 5 million chance in a given year to die from a terrorist attack. Your chances of being struck by lightning are much higher at 1 in 750,000.
It's the spastic, flailing foreign policy overreaction and the creeping police/surveillance state at home that is the much greater threat to the individual, both in terms of the physical threat from one's own government as well as the bankrupting financial costs associated with such.
Islam. Christianity. Judaism. They all have their militant factions. We have tens of millions of these barking monkeys right here in our very own country.
This article by Pat Buchanan shreds your silly argument:
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/mar/01/00006/
“[A] radical strain within Islam,” says Perle, “ ... seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and laws.”
Well, yes. Militant Islam has preached that since the 7th century. But what are the odds the Boys of Tora Bora are going to “overthrow our civilization” and coerce us all to start praying to Mecca five times a day?
In his own review of An End to Evil, Joshua Micah Marshall picks up this same scent of near-hysteria over the Islamic threat:
The book conveys a general sense that America is at war with Islam itself anywhere and everywhere: the contemporary Muslim world .... is depicted as one great cauldron of hate, murder, obscurantism, and deceit. If our Muslim adversaries are not to destroy Western civilization, we must gird for more battles.
To suggest Frum and Perle are over the top is not to imply we not take seriously the threat of terror attacks on airliners, in malls, from dirty bombs, or, God forbid, a crude atomic device smuggled in by Ryder truck or container ship. Yet even this will never “overthrow our civilization.”
In the worst of terror attacks, we lost 3,000 people. Horrific. But at Antietam Creek, we lost 7,000 in a day’s battle in a nation that was one-ninth as populous. Three thousand men and boys perished every week for 200 weeks of that Civil War. We Americans did not curl up and die. We did not come all this way because we are made of sugar candy.
Germany and Japan suffered 3,000 dead every day in the last two years of World War II, with every city flattened and two blackened by atom bombs. Both came back in a decade. Is al-Qaeda capable of this sort of devastation when they are recruiting such scrub stock as Jose Padilla and the shoe bomber?
In the war we are in, our enemies are weak. That is why they resort to the weapon of the weak—terror. And, as in the Cold War, time is on America’s side. Perseverance and patience are called for, not this panic.
In 25 years, militant Islam has seized three countries: Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. We toppled the Taliban almost without losing a man. Sudan is a failed state. In Iran, a generation has grown up that knows nothing of Savak or the Great Satan but enough about the mullahs to have rejected them in back-to-back landslides. The Iranian Revolution has reached Thermidor. Wherever Islamism takes power, it fails. Like Marxism, it does not work.
Yet, assume it makes a comeback. So what? Taken together, all 22 Arab nations do not have the GDP of Spain. Without oil, their exports are the size of Finland’s. Not one Arab nation can stand up to Israel, let alone the United States. The Islamic threat is not strategic, but demographic. If death comes to the West it will be because we embraced a culture of death—birth control, abortion, sterilization, euthanasia. Western man is dying as Islamic man migrates north to await his passing and inherit his estate.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The British called the American revolutionaries "terrorists." Anytime you fight a war, you engender hatred in your enemy. The war doesn't end by handing out Hershey bars. It ends when you crush the enemy's ability to resist. Think Sherman's March to the Sea. After the Civil War, they sent Sherman to annihilate the Indians. That was genocide, but it did the trick. Have you heard of any Indian uprisings lately? As Churchill said, "The victors get to write the history." And what a glorious history he wrote. Of course, he left out the pictures of the fire bombing of Dresden. And then, there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And don't forget Putin's foray into Chechnya. Sherman redux it was. Only the dead have seen the end of war. Fight or die.
And for all of you who think that our soldiers are sweethearts, or that we are incapable sadistic behaviour ourselves, reacquaint yourself with the classic Stanford prisoner experiment. Perhaps the best illustration of how good people can go bad. It's best not to let ourselves get suckered into going down that path. Let's hash this out in the light of day. Let's be eachother's ears and eyes. The herd prospers by remaining alert and unified. Long live the herd :)
The psychopaths are ruling the world. For the life of me I can't fathom how anyone with empathy could get off on terrorism and torture. It's sick and perverted. All rationalizations for it is bullshit and achieves nothing but create fear and loathing. Lots of that going on in the world so I guess they are winning this thing.
Empires practice oppression outside its borders and repression inside its borders. Torture accomplishes both.
I wonder how many people here on ZH have had the slightest wisp of a thought cross their minds that maybe, just maybe, the US government might someday, somewhere, consider torturing me if I did something "they" didn't like. How many people here on ZH would never consider divulging your ID publicly, not because you're worried about Internet loonies, but because of the content of this web site and you're association with it.
You don't even need to seriously consider any of this as actually possible. The thought is all it takes to corral the cattle just a little bit tighter than if the thought had not entered your mind. And it doesn't even require the majority to do so. Just a few strays here and there and "Mission Accomplished". Psyops is usually very subtle and rarely does a population consider that it might be used against them by their own government.
So, if torture is not effective (and there is a mountain of data saying it is not, at least for extracting information) why is it used by most every government? Because it IS effective. Just for different reasons and on different subjects. It is a subtle form of terrorism against us.
Excellent. My first thought when I heard about the underwear bomber is that all they need to do now, after laying the 911 foundation, is have failed attempts here and there. Instant flashbacks. Saves money, angry widows, public inquiries, and distorted physics.
Exactly. The released toture photos from Iraqi prisons were more than likely part of a "psyop" - for the Middle East culture as well as the American.
(THIS IS WHAT WE DO TO PEOPLE THAT WE LABEL AN ENEMY, EQUALLY FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC)
Yes, very subtle.
+1 again, CD. It pretty much goes without saying, but I like to do it anyway.
+
+1
cognitive dissonance. Great choice for a name and one of my favorite thinkers. Thank you.
Yes, absolutely: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/torture-is-form-of-terrorism.html
These sorts of articles really bring out the authority-worshipping hand-lickers and disinfo clowns.
"The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus."
~Danilo Kis
I've often wondered what it might be like somehow to be transported back into time to late 1939 early 1940 in Poland to experience first hand Nazism in its most characteristic expressions, Einsatzgruppen ethnic cleansing, Gestapo torture and the like. Precisely what kind of human being was it that might be capable voluntarily of carrying out such practices? Tonight as I watched the McLaughlin Report on PBS, I found out. There, discussing the case of the Panty Bomber, was the hate-filled, almost rabid Monica Crowley actually and quite openly calling for the waterboarding of this individual. Here, I thought, is the face of the notorious Else Koch of Buchenwald, the one that made lampshades out of the skin of murdered Jews and Gypsies, here the very same mind set that propelled Rudolf Hoess at Auschwitz. Let no one every say it can't happen here; it already has. In its all-too-noticeable present day iteration, National Socialism lives on in all its virulence in Monica Crowley and in the ideological movement with which she is identified, neo-conservatism. When the public advocacy of torture is tolerated without complaint on government supported television, a line has been crossed. The America I loved as a boy during and right after the Second World War is forever gone. This is 1933 and Adolf Hitler is again breathing down our necks.
Excellent.I go a little crazy when I hear the phrase "never again" as relates to the holocaust.Yeah, right.We are there.
Some Americans recognize these traitors in our midst, and more needs to be done to highlight their evil and marginalize them for the insane criminals they are.This is our greatest challenge and if we fail to stop these idiots the world will burn.The Nazis did not have thermonuclear weapons.But they do now.
Thank you for your excellent post, so free of the smug jingoist crap that passes for patriotism today...and it's concomitant justification of every evil imaginable.
Thank You!
Bravo.
Excellent contribution.
See my comment. It were ever thus.
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
THIS IS A MUST WATCH!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOlwbaPe2os
They *want* to create new terrorists, to justify the $$$ they are giving to their pals in the military-industrial complex. This kind of war profiteering has been going on for ages. Major General Smedly Butler, a famous decorated marine, called war a racket. Well, it still is.
Gen. Butler's pamphlet is a classic. I'd call it a must-read, along with his bio. It's available as a .pdf here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
Concerning tasers and torture. If you ever run into a cop with an attitude you WILL learn something about stop, drop, and roll. Even if your laying perfectly still you will be admonished to STOP RESISTING! The day this happens to you, you will plan forever on how to seek revenge with out being caught until you don't give a crap about being caught.
Torture and terrorism are similar in some ways. Both are very effective, but not at what they purport to achieve.
Torture is a great way for those in power to impress their power on those they intend to dominate. You keep the details secret, sort of, but let rumors circulate to terrorize the subject population. You don't really trust the information you get; sometimes it's accurate, but it's equally likely a subject of torture will say absolutely anything he thinks the torturers want to hear just to make it stop. It's a dominance tactic, not an intelligence tactic.
Terrorism works too. The actual purpose is to provoke a disproportionate response which, along with the original terrorist act, alienates any potential moderate go-betweens who might broker a compromise. Plus it scares the hell out of people. We in the US are running around like chickens with our heads cut off with our shoes in our hands, little bottles of liquids in baggies and maybe electronic strip-searches because some guys got on planes 8+ years ago who shouldn't have been let on and some guy a couple weeks ago (who also shouldn't have been boarded) set his nuts on fire.
Note that neither tactic does what it says it's meant to do, but is very effective at its true purpose. Just perfect for these times when up is meant to be down and so on.
Oh, and I'm against both of them. Not too keen on war, either. "Cui bono" tends to lead one to uncomfortable realizations.
The United States of Bed Wetters
Great Post, GW.
Ever beat the crap out of a kid?
He will tell you anything you want to hear.
Ever think how you would feel if somebody was killing civilians around your village AND to boot, your fellow villagers were barely at sustenance levels? Wouldn't you hate those killers and want to kill them in return?
Striking fear into people is a way to get desired behaviors, however, if you push too hard then sometimes people have nothing to lose and will seek revenge at any cost.
The US would have more luck eliminating terrorist if it developed more sophisticated negotiation skills. Notice that we never try that. Easier to just be the biggest bully on the block.
C'mon, you can't ignore centuries of Realpolitik. You need to carry a big stick to have negotiating leverage. How much benefit has Obama's "sophisticated negotiation skills" gotten us so far with Putin? With the mullahs in Iran? Dictators and thugs lie. Remember "peace in our time"?
we could try talking to them like they are human beings and quit using a unilateral foreign policy in the middle east that only takes the interest of the terrorist occupying state of israel(built upon stolen land) into account and it has been that way for most of the 20th century and now into the 21st century. ron paul the other day was on larry king and he made the statement that the terrorist attack us because we are occupying their lands. well imho, this is inoorrect, but nevertheless, the ever prescient stick in the mud, ben stein went off on a tangent and accused ron paul of being antisemitic.....so there were two "republicans" attacking each other and in the middle of it all, why none other than old moose face herself, the pride of the 18th district in houston, that old camera shy congress person sheila jackson lee.....
Your characterization of the talking heads on tv gave me a good chuckle. However, there's more to our foreign policy than the Israel issue. Nor is Israel the problem here. VDH provides some clear thinking: http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson011010.html
The real terrorists are running the financial system.
I hope more passengers KICK THE CRAP
out of these Imam-inated idiots. Break
their necks - save the American taxpayer
a bundle. Of course, by the twisted blame
America first logic of GW et al, this will
create more terrorists.
Buy some Tasar stock. The Tasar is an implement of torture and is being ever more widely used here.
Torture has always been much more popular then usually suspected but the advance of Western cultural trend towards liberal views of the rights of individuals vs state and police power based upon not just political but ethical and moral reasons made the acceptance or embrace of torture and physical abuse in military conflict and law enforcement made admission that one supported torture politically incorrect. The fault lines are perfectly obvious here and everywhere. Conservatives and Christians now openly accept and embrace torture. 54% of Americans in a survey wanted to water board the Detroit crazy. Supposedly to get info from him but he's singing like a bird. Something one would expect of a non professional probably depressed and politically obsessed young man. Torture in his case like most really is embraced as punnishment and retribution aganst undesireables. Well that's opinion. Inflicting torture has been known to induce woodies in those appying it as well and certain people are attracted to it because of that. Finally in America we giving freedom to these people and after all isn't America all about freedom for all?
In any case torture is an investment opprotunity and the market is where these things should be decided. Tasars are sweeping into police forces across the nation but the spector of lawsuits driven by anti torture liberals threatens to harm or destroy the profitability of Tasar. Vigorish push back against torture opponents is going to be required if Tasars and other pain population control investment opprotunities are going go flourish.